We don't knead no edukayshun

I was delighted to see bits of the University of KwaZulu-Natal go up in flames last week.

It made me come over all schadenfreudy, largely because I never got the chance to go to university. None would have me. They said I hadn’t done well enough in matric. Really? How is a C, a D, an E and three Fs not good enough? What kind of monstrous system would set standards so ridiculously high?

It was obviously personal and I have remained embittered and violently anti-tertiary education ever since. If I could afford petrol I’d be making petrol bombs around the clock and paying previously disadvantaged students to throw them on my behalf.

I was especially pleased to see Howard College’s law library go up in flames. For a start, “law library” is an oxymoron. An oxymoron is someone who goes to the library looking for books on the law instead of proper literature like 50 Shades of Grey and He’s Just Not That Into You.

Besides, libraries are the work of the devil. They are run by thin-lipped harridans who will think nothing of slitting your throat if you make a sound, even if you are having sex in the reference section, which is your right as a student.

You know what kind of people frequent law libraries? Law students, that’s who. Many of these miscreants will one day end up in front of a judge, where they belong. Also, let us not forget that the law cannot be trusted. It leaves itself open to interpretation and speaks Latin when it doesn’t want to be understood. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the law library hadn’t conspired to set itself alight. I can almost hear the Constitution rubbing its tiny redundant hands together, maliciously casting the Incendio spell.

Some people said that early Roman-Dutch law books were destroyed. This is excellent news. Terrible things happened in those days and we don’t need any reminders of people like Nero or Peter Stuyvesant. Try calling an Italian a Roman these days and he’ll have your throat. Or more likely your wallet. And maybe your wife. As for the Dutch, the less said the better.

I hope the burnings aren’t restricted to the law faculty. At the very least there needs to be a bonfire of the humanities.

Universities are responsible for more trouble in this world than anything else. Think about it. What do you get at a university apart from mediocre food, lashings of casual sex and recreational drugs? An education, that’s what. Want to know who has one? Robert Mugabe. This man is a living example of the damage an education can do to a person. Mugabe was a decent, young man when he walked into Fort Hare University in the late 1940s. It was a beast that shuffled out, clutching a Bachelor of Dark Arts degree in his misshapen paw. As if that wasn’t enough, he went on to acquire a further six degrees, thereby guaranteeing his reputation later in life as a dangerous megalomaniac known for his faultless grammar and syntax when it came to issuing draconian decrees against his critics.

The only reason our fearless leader Comrade Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma the First, by the Grace of God President of the Republic of South Africa, Head of the Household, Defender of the Faith, Pastor of the Flock, Defeater of the Mbeki, Unifier of the Nation, Msholozi of Msholozis, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, Conqueror of the Apartheid Regime and Owner of Property in Nkandla isn’t a bloodthirsty demagogue possessed by demons is because he never went to university and doesn’t know any better. Some say it is his single saving grace.

Universities cause police brutality. You would think that policemen, not having gone to university themselves, would at least understand that the enemy here is the university itself, not the protestor, and would teargas campus buildings and fire rubber bullets at the blackboards.

Universities also attract white people, the primary cause of racism. That alone is reason enough to burn them to the ground. The universities, not the white people. With every university destroyed, these white “professors” and “lecturers” will have nowhere to go apart from maybe Perth and London where they will get what they deserve i.e. massive salaries and considerable respect.

The Democratic Alliance describes the awesome events at UKZN as a “catastrophe”. Is there no limit to their hysterical hyperbole? I’ll tell you what’s a bona fide catastrophe. When you’re the last person out of the bottle store before they close on a Sunday and, as you get to your car, the bag breaks and you lose everything.

I don’t really know what the students are complaining about, but I’ve heard they are upset about having to pay fees. And so they should be. Tertiary education is a fundamental human right and should be free. Houses should also be free. And cars. And, obviously, beer. Anything that is not free must be destroyed immediately.

You know what else needs to be destroyed? Rocks and trees and stuff. Next to universities, Nature has caused more mayhem than anything else. Nature doesn’t hesitate to kill or maim people who get lost in it. When the universities are nothing more than piles of smoldering rubble, I urge protestors to stone the rocks and trample the flowers. #FynbosMustFall.

If the government keeps rebuilding the universities – which seems unlikely given minister Blade Nzimande’s staggering lack of interest in anything to do with education – the next best form of protest would be for students to deliberately fail their exams. One of the most basic human rights is the right to remain stupid. Knowledge is power and power corrupts. #KnowledgeMustFall.

And while the Guptas are hard at work capturing the state, the vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Cape Town was being captured by his students. Max Price had given a presentation at a commission set up to investigate the feasibility of free higher education. How very cheeky. Just because he’s the head of the university doesn’t mean he’s allowed to have an opinion on how it’s run. That’s the responsibility of the students.

Price comes trailing a string of degrees, including a doctorate. That’s half the problem right there. The other half obviously being that he’s a white settler. He needs to abdicate and make way for someone more suitable like, say, Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane. Students have a right to insist that morons control their universities.

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16 thoughts on “We don't knead no edukayshun”

A Model C teacher taught my “host child” that Australia was a continent consisting solely of ice – at the time of the Olympic games being played on its SOIL, and that the Bermuda Triangle was an island – on or under which ships sometimes sank? Sahara Desert gets one teaspoon of rain a year – 5mm is millions of litres but not enough to let it flourish. Fingers have three bones each so whole hand has 15 bones (19) and nails grow after death (flesh shrinks) and dancer does an arrow best (arabesque) and a shy child who is loath to do something is filled with hatred. I knew before I opened the maths book that there would be a cute angle in it, instead of an acute one. These “facts” have addled my brain that had the top IQ at Westville Boys’ High! Love, Naomi
As a result I have sent part of my pension to this poor underprivileged person for 16 years!

Ben, I look forward every Monday here in California to your blog. I am not complete without it. Why? You have the undeniable ability to make me laugh hysterically. I need that. I wish I could read the paper you work for. South Africa is pretty far away. But I can relate to everything you say Ben. Thank you. LMAO every time!